October 22nd, 2018

Los Angeles County receives new bids to remake San Pedro’s closed courthouse property

One of San Pedro’s prime development parcels is about to get back into the queue.
Six months after Los Angeles County officials pulled the plug on the first developer tapped to overhaul the 1.8-acre county courthouse, 505 S. Centre St.,  which has sat closed since 2014, the deadline for new bids has closed — with several responses pouring in from prospective developers wishing to remake the property.

The county has not released specifics about how many developers submitted bids, or who they were.

“We are starting over,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn said in a statement. “This time around we have more interest in this property and that gives us a better opportunity to build a project that we can be proud of.”
Officials are now reviewing the proposals, a process they expect to finish by mid-to-late October, with a recommendation for the supervisors anticipated for November.
Under the first developer, Holland Partner Group of Vancouver, plans revolved around a mixed-use project.
When those negotiations fell through in March, some, including Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino, suggested the county should sell the property to a developer as one way to move the process along more quickly.
Holland, selected in November 2016, was eliminated in March after the two sides could not come to a project agreement following months of exclusive negotiations to nail down the details. County officials said Holland requested terms that were not financially feasible.
The property has long been viewed as a key parcel in San Pedro’s plans to revamp the downtown shopping district while better connecting it to the waterfront just a few blocks away, which is also being revitalized.
The hope was that the courthouse property could be finished around the same time as the San Pedro Public Market, scheduled to open in 2020 or 2021 in place of Ports O’ Call Village.